Young Adult Moving: A New Reality

ALEXANDRA PAJAK, Special Contributor

Published: October 7, 2004

It was a familiar college scene: two roommates procrastinating, fighting over popcorn and watching reality TV. With only a quick flip of the channel, though, a new scene emerged into our room. The evening news featured the latest suicide bombing in the Middle East. My roommate Amanda and I discussed the strangeness of performing the typical tasks of our lives—going to class, going to work—all the while knowing that people on the other side of the world are suffering.

As a person of faith, I want to help those in need. But when those people live far away, like the victims of the bombing that night, what can just one person do to help? Pray, certainly. But at that moment I felt the want, and the responsibility, to move. To sort of act on my prayers. When I described the feeling to Amanda, she said she often felt the same way. We were uncertain, however, as to how to act on such motivations in a practical way.

Only a week later, we both received a campus-wide e-mail from our college’s Religious Life office. The note informed everyone that the International Rescue Committee (IRC) of Atlanta was seeking volunteers to “adopt” refugee families during their first month in the United States. The IRC encourages volunteers to introduce the families to the city’s infrastructure, as well as American culture.

Inspired by our conversation a week before, Amanda and I signed up. We volunteered with the IRC last autumn and adopted two families, one from Azerbaijan and the other from Liberia. Forging friendships with both families proved to be fun. With our first family, we played kickball on our campus quad and went out for coffee. One afternoon we explored a nature trail, teaching each other the Russian and then English words for “tree,” “creek,” and “bridge,” all of which we passed on our walk. Our second family had four young children, whom Amanda and I baby-sat one evening. We also helped the parents locate information about driver’s licenses and local community colleges.

Both families openly discussed the political tensions of their home countries with us. Azerbaijan has economic difficulties; Liberia has political unrest. For the first time in my life, I spoke with human faces behind poverty and governmental turmoil. Sometimes the divergent differences of our realities did clash; I sensed that my friend and I, no matter how emphatic we tried to be, could never fully appreciate some aspects of poverty and oppression the families experienced. Similarly, significant language barriers existed between us and our first family, and our experiences in countries.

The religious faith of both families struck me, though, despite such differences. Both expressed a belief in God and that their faith has led them to greater opportunity. “In God all things are possible,” David, the husband from Liberia, told me. “I met my wife, and I knew I would marry her. Now we are here. God is with us.”

Just weeks before we met the families, I confessed to a priest that I was having trouble seeing God in everyday life.

“God is nothing you can see,” the priest said. He knocked hard on the armrest of the wooden chair in which he sat. “God is not like this. God is beyond the physical world. Instead he is here, all around us.”

I hold enormous esteem for the values and practices of the Catholic Church. As a young person, though, I sometimes find great difficulty in confidently following the church’s path of humility and ritual in the secular world. The media features celebrities who flaunt their wealth on one channel and a man beheaded on the next. I often feel like I’m on a desperate search for the reality that lies between such two extremes, as a young person just beginning my adult life.

Following our experience with refugee families, food, shelter, clothing and medicine became something that I deeply valued and for which I thanked God for providing to those around me. Perhaps more importantly, though, I slowly began to appreciate on a deeper level the spiritual relationships God gives us: family, friends and the ability to help those in need. The words of the priest now make sense: God is indeed everywhere, all around us. For me, He is in my parents, my brother and my parish community.

A saint once said God speaks His truths softly in a whisper. Assisting the less fortunate humbled me to the wide array of comforts of my life. I was reminded of the importance of those more ethereal things like love, faith and charity. Sometimes through the rawest of situations do the greatest truths emerge.

I believe that offering one’s time to those in need stands as perhaps today’s most gracious gift to God and those around us. Considering the current times of fast-paced lifestyles and worldwide conflict, an individual may not be able to save the world single-handedly. One person can, however, do what he or she can within the community.

Math was never my favorite subject, but if everyone did a little to help, wouldn’t that add up to something magnificent? In the meantime, this autumn I’m off to school again, and I will be on the search for a new opportunity to help my community. I’ve also learned how to share my popcorn. Let’s watch TV and look for more reasons to get moving.